Choosing life, happiness, peace and joy. Oh and weight loss too

Month

August 2014

Today I am sick again. Emphasis on the again. And while trawling through my previous blogs, I found this. And I wanted to republish it. Because when you can’t breathe so well, life is that moment when you stand up and take a step instead of collapsing into a puddle of tears.

So I turn 39 tomorrow. I have resolved that it will be the last progressive birthday I will be having. Presents still mandatory into the future though.

Thing is – I don’t feel 39. I don’t even feel 29 or 19. Apart from a whole lot more darkness in my heart and spirit, I don’t feel like time has passed.

So forgive me if I reflect.

I have loved. Or thought I loved. And lost very badly. I learnt along the way that it wasn’t love. It was the broken pieces of my nature that needed to fix / be loved / help. I have yet to love. And be loved. Doesn’t matter though. For I have learnt to love myself for who I am. Mostly. The journey is ongoing.

I have cried for friends that have passed me by. But I have learnt that those that are meant to stay, do. And those that leave make space for better ones.

I have buried a father I barely knew. Barely remember. He died too young and because of it, I grew up alone with a broken mother. I have learnt to forgive him, and God, for the reality I found myself in. And I look forward to meeting him again one day. Perhaps he will even be proud of me.

I have learnt to accept a mother that is damaged. Still she manipulates and plays on my feelings and still my nature allows it. But I have come to realize that she is not doing it out of vindictiveness or malice. She is simply broken in her own way, and was perhaps never afforded the opportunity to heal herself. She is my mother, she is old, and I love her.

I have made my own version of an immediate family. Friends, animals, my mother. A sister I never thought I would get along with, who carries me more than she should. Who gets me through sometimes. They care for me and I care for them. And in the dark moments – that is enough. Love is always enough.

And forgive me if I look forward.

I will be who I am. That may seem to be a strange statement, but it has taken me an age to accept that I am me. And it has taken me even longer to just be me.

I will keep dreaming of the day that I get to sit on a train as it slowly winds its way through to Alaska. Perhaps someone will join me. Perhaps I will be alone. But it will always be my dream.

I will strive to be the healthiest I can be. Every day my lungs get a little better I think. And every day I hope to lose a tiny bit more weight. One day – I will walk into a shop and buy a small to medium pair of pants off the rack.

I will try to write more. Because in the writing I find peace. Allot of tears, but also peace.

I will love my family as much as I can. No soul is meant to walk this world alone.

I will love my God as I always have. He has seen me through some serious darkness. With patience and love.

I will be who I am, love who I care for, dream big, diet more, exercise allot and write.

This blog is the place where I am fully able to be who I am – warts, freckles, fat rolls and all.

It is the place where truth needs to live, if I am to have any recourse from the lies I tell myself in my harshest moments.

Today is a harsh moment.

I woke up this morning and my brain chose to have a judgment day. And I was left wanting.

It is so difficult when you suffer from low self-esteem and you live alone. There is no gentle bolstering. No offhand kindness. There is just you and your brain in overdrive telling you what you are not.

Not thin.

Not fit.

Not in a relationship.

Not missed.

Not adored.

Not enough.

That last one echoes. Not enough. Never enough.

What is enough?

So as I sit here, I have my well-worn and well-rehearsed mantra running through my head on auto play. All of them truth or versions of my truth.

I inspired someone to incredulity today. And perhaps something close to hysterical laughter.

My puppy Blossom is ill. I noticed that she wasn’t her normal self on Friday and she gradually got worse until yesterday when she stopped eating completely.

I bundled her off to the vet and she has some kind of intestinal / gut infection. Lots of medicine, an injection to bring her high temperature down and home we came with stern instructions to ‘keep a good eye on her’.

In all of that palava , in the getting her to the vet and it being confirmed to me just how sick she was, in the stress of the day – I’m afraid my tears got the better of me.

I am by nature an emotional person. I am by nature a nurturer and a carer. I am by nature, an animal person. Put those 3 things together plus a sick dog and you have a recipe for tears.

The incredulous part?

I was telling a friend of mine about all the ‘dramaticals’ as I like to call it when someone from outside of the conversation decided they were entitled to an opinion.

Apparently, dogs are just dogs. There is no point in getting emotional with them. They are just another animal.

Apparently, I have a screw or two loose because I love my menagerie and do everything in my power to make their lives better.

I may very well have a screw loose but caring of another living being is my choice and my privilege.

I am definitely not a sad soul, I’m perhaps quite the opposite actually. And I am single because not all of us need to be one of two.

Humans have souls and we are responsible for the worst atrocities I can think of. I am glad animals don’t have souls. They have something better. Purer. Cleaner. There is no word for it I don’t think. But it is in their eyes.

I do not understand people who are intolerant of what others believe or how they live.

I do not understand people who view animals as something to be used and discarded, like last weeks rubbish.

I do not understand people.

I understand animals.

They are what they are, and they have no need to be more or less than that. They live. And they let live within the boundaries of their species.

I have a friend who believes that every person in our life, past and present, is there to fulfill a very specific purpose. She also believes that friends, while not only fulfilling a purpose, also cater to a very specific facet of our personality.

Say I have a silly side (so do), I have friends that compliment, elevate and sometimes even exaggerate that facet of who I am.

It follows then that when we go through dark periods, while we do indeed have friends full of light and love, we also draw to us the darker, the hidden agenda and the not always so good for us.

So what then becomes of these dark period friends? Not everyone is capable of change, of finding peace or hope or joy. And not everyone wants to.

In the face of obvious negativity or overwhelming bitterness, the choice and decision is easy to make.

Not so much when it is just an ‘unpresent’ friend. You know the kind. Always too busy. Never answer anything. When you do meet, usually by chance, they are the one who asks if you have put on weight. They are the gossips. The ones you have a sneaky feeling revel in the misery of others. But they never do anything obvious. And they have their good sides too.

I guess I am wondering when you call it quits? At the first veiled insult? At the tenth? Or is it much like a scale, with the good and bad balancing it out?

I’d like to think I am a good friend. The sad thought though is that I am probably someone’s ‘unpresent’ friend.

Sometimes, when you live alone, and you are prone to periods of severe introspection, it is easy to get locked into an endless litany that swirls around your subconscious like a black wind. Sometimes it becomes too easy to forget the good in me. The unique. The free.

So I will strive to remember:

Be kind to your self, it is the only self you have.

Be true to your self, far too many others will not be true to you.

Be gentle with your self, because if you cannot be, then how can you expect others to be?

Be alive in your self, not living a dead life, filled with inaction and inactivity.

Be hope filled in your self, because know that no matter what, it will always get better.

Be free in your self, because all souls were born to be free.

Be strong in your self, for no one can break you unless you give them permission.